Life in Honduras

Part Three

By Don Moore

In this series of articles, I've been looking back at features of every
day life in Honduras during my time there with the Peace Corps in 1982-
84. This time, however, I promise you we won't delve into personal
hygiene, hi!

OLD SCHOOL BUSES NEVER DIE

Up here in North America, have you ever seen an old school bus in an auto
junkyard? I never have, and I know why. Old school buses never die - they
get sent to Central America. As few people have cars, buses are an
important means of transportation, both between towns and within towns as
urban transportation. But, poor countries can't often afford new buses,
so they have to make do with ones that our school kids have already
wrecked.

When the buses get to Central America, no one bothers to remove every
reminder of their previous life. For example, many buses in Honduras
still have signs with the school board's rules of behavior posted in the
front of the bus. Of course, the signs are in English so no one follows
them. People in Honduras don't throw spitballs too much, anyway. But then
there's the rule that says no standing. In Central America when the seats
are full, people stand. Lots of people stand. Actually, in every country
it's illegal to have standees on the buses, but the rules are rarely
enforced.

The fullest bus I've ever been on was between Jocotan (location of Radio
Chortis, 3380 kHz) and Chiquimula, Guatemala. I was standing in the
aisle, totally unable to move either foot. The bus seated 54 people, but
I counted 95 and probably missed a few. But the national police were
conducting their annual brief crackdown on standees in the buses, so when
we got to the outskirts of Chiquimula, the driver stopped and told about
half the passengers to get off. I played the dumb gringo and pretended
that I didn't understand what was going on, so I got a seat for the rest
of the ride into town.

When old school buses get to Central America, they are almost always
repainted, in all sorts of colors. Some are green, white, and red and
others white, green, and yellow. My favorite was always white, orange,
and blue. It's very unusual to see a bus painted only one color, and they
never use that orange-yellow that the bus was originally painted. Along
the side, the name of the bus company is painted in big letters -
something like CORTISBA or Transportes Silva. Of course, a company that
operates half-a-dozen rejected US school buses in Central America isn't
exactly on the Fortune 500 list, so don't take that term "bus company"
too seriously.

On the front of the bus, above the windshield, the route is painted, like
Santa Barbara - San Pedro Sula or Siquatepeque - Comayagua. Also, a route
number is given, like Ruta #18 or Ruta #101. Ruta #101 was very popular;
a lot of different routes used that number. You see, the route number
doesn't have any significance. It's just a number the bus owner liked and
decided to paint on his buses to make them look more impressive. Once in
a while a bus wouldn't get painted and would be driven around with the
name of its old school district still on the side. Lakewood Schools and
Mesa Valley School District are two that I remember among the city buses
in Tegucigalpa.

Central American buses may be old and worn out, but the system works. For
example, all Americans familiar with the urban bus system in Tegucigalpa
agreed that it was better than anything they knew of in the States. The
system was set up so that you could get between any two points in the
city taking no more than two buses at a cost of only ten cents per bus.
Except for late at night, waits were rarely more than ten minutes and
often less than five. No wonder when I tell Latin Americans about the
Davenport bus system, where buses are scheduled an hour apart, they are
shocked.

Inter-city bus routes are likewise cheap and frequent. The San Pedro Sula
- Tegucigalpa route was the most traveled one in the country, and three
different companies had about fifty buses a day scheduled to make the
run, with at least one leaving every hour around the clock. The 150 mile
trip took about 4 1/2 hours and cost $3.50. On this most important route,
the buses were the Greyhound type with double reclining seats. The air
conditioners had long ago broken down, however, so passengers had to keep
the windows open. From San Pedro Sula, one could go on to Guatemala City
via two buses in another twelve hours, including time for meals and
border formalities, for a total cost of about eight dollars.

So, they may not be comfortable or sparkling new, but when it comes to
the basic purpose of getting from one place to another as cheaply as
possible with as little waiting as possible, Central American buses are
the tops in public transportation from my point of view!

TAXIS

Taxis are the other side to the coin of public transportation in Honduras
and Central America. As many middle class families do not own a car (and
almost none own more than one), taxis get a lot of use through necessity.
Yes, people do use those city buses I just got finished praising. But, as
efficient as they are, buses do not provide door-to-door service and if
you are on your way home from a shopping trip with a handful of sacks and
a couple of kids in tow, a taxi sure beats a bus if you can
afford it.

Most Hondurans are too poor to ever use a taxi. But, there are enough
car-less middle class people, that all sizable Honduran towns have a taxi
service and in the main cities there are hundreds of taxis. Most taxis
are driver-owned, but in each town or city the drivers have their own
unions. Mostly this means that they have set up policies to take turns in
prime waiting spots and have agreed on approximate fees for distances so
that they don't end up undercutting one another. That is important, as
Honduran taxis do not have meters. Instead, passengers need to agree on a
fee for their destination with the driver before getting in. In
Tegucigalpa, fees were usually around two to three dollars, although
could go up to about five for trips to the far reaches of the city. In
San Pedro Sula, most taxi fees were around a dollar. If you are a
foreigner, it is especially important to agree on a rate beforehand, as
if the driver senses you don't know the local customs and appropriate
fees, he may sock you with a ten or fifteen dollar charge when you arrive
at your destination and its too late to back out.

Taxis are always easy to spot. They are licensed by the government and
each one has its number (two or three large digits) and the word "taxi"
painted on the car in several places. In Honduras, taxis can be any color
and any type of car - whatever the owner happened to buy. More often than
not, taxis are older cars - few people buy new cars to make them into
taxis. Most taxi drivers buy on the used market and then drive their car
until it falls apart - and some nearly are. Of course, the owners of the
worse-looking ones know better than to bother waiting for fares outside
the better hotels. If you don't see a taxi, just listen. Drivers of empty
taxis honk their horns periodically as they cruise the streets looking
for customers. They are especially mindful to honk at foreigners, who
they assume would not bother taking local buses...

A DIFFERENT KIND OF SCHOOL

As noted in the first article, I worked with the Peace Corps from
January, 1982 to April, 1984. After Peace Corps, I stayed in Honduras
until November, 1984, teaching English at the Honduran Air Force Academy
at Palmerola Air Base just outside Comayagua. My students there were the
most motivated I've ever had, and they had reason to be. School policy
was that anyone who failed a test was put under arrest (i.e. not allowed
to leave the base) for thirty days and anyone who misbehaved had his head
shaved. Of course the teachers had to report problems in order for
punishment to be meted out. I always "forgot" to report it when a student
failed a test and no one ever misbehaved enough to cause me to want to
have his head shaved. They were good students; they all came from lower-
middle class Honduran families and this was their chance to get an
education and be something.

Several times the students and I got into political discussions, and I was
surprised at the wide range of political viewpoints, from the left to the far-
right. I remember one lieutenant (not a student - students didn't have rank
yet) who was an admirer of Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D'Abuisson.
Condsidering the Lieutenant's personality, I could have easily pictured him
carving up a political prisoner and I avoided dealing with him whenever
possible.

Palmerola is also the main US military base in Honduras, and there were
always more Americans at Palmerola than Hondurans, at least when I was there.
Even during official "down" periods when the number of US troops in all of
Honduras was officially under one hundred, there were obviously several
hundred U.S. troops at Palmerola. As I worked for the Honduran military, I
rarely had contact with the US presence except for illegally using the
post office. The APO post office was in the building next door to my
classroom and I was the only American on the base working for Honduras,
not the US, and therefore ineligible to use APO. But the folks at the post
office didn't know that...

WAIT A WHILE

The main reason I took the job at the Honduran Air Force Academy was that
Comayagua was only an hour away by bus from San Jeronimo, the village
where my (then) fiance‚ Theresa worked. As Theresa had started after I
had, she still had some time left to go on her two year commitment with
the Peace Corps. Shortly after starting moving to Comayagua I went to San
Jeronimo for a weekend visit. The primary school that Theresa worked in
was having a Mothers' Day pageant, and while that sort of thing isn't
exactly high entertainment, rural Honduras doesn't have much better to
offer. And, Theresa was expected to be there, anyway.

The pageant was to begin at 7 p.m. and the school was about a five minute
walk from Theresa's house, so we left at 6:30 to be sure to get seats.
When we arrived, only a few teachers, students were there and
preparations had barely begun, and none of the audience had arrived yet.
We walked over to the park, a block away, and sat on a bench watching
the people go by. People would walk by and then finding no one else
waiting for the pageant, would turn around and go home, to return in
another twenty or thirty minutes. Even after everything was set up and
ready to go at the pageant, people would still walk by us, see the lack
of an audience, then go back home. Maybe in the park they would meet some
neighbors on their way to the pageant. Then the first group would tell
the second group, "Oh, no sense in going there. No one else is waiting
yet." And then they would all head home. Of course, a few people did stay
each time. About 7:40 Theresa and I walked back and got good seats.
Finally, around 8:05 the place was reasonably full and the program got
started. Members of the audience continued to straggle in over the next
half hour.

What is surprising about this is not the attitude of the townspeople, nor
the fact that the pageant started over an hour late. The surprising fact
is that I had lived in Honduras for about 2 1/2 years at that point, and
Theresa for 1 1/2 years, yet we actually left the house a half-hour early
to get seats. How could we have been so stupid? We should have known we
could leave the house a half-hour late and not only get good seats, but
not miss a thing!

Most people outside of Latin America have heard of how time functions in
Latin America - the so called ma¤ana syndrome. A meeting scheduled to
begin at 2 p.m. will probably get underway at about 3 p.m. If you arrive
at two, you can count on having some time alone to relax first. If a
friend says they will call for you at seven, be ready by eight. In my two
years at the Normal School in Santa Barbara, not once did a teachers'
meeting begin on time. Go to a carpenter's shop and ask him to make you
some chairs. He'll tell you they'll be ready in three days when he knows
it will take five. But, if he told you five days, you might think he
meant seven. Go back in three days and the carpenter will be surprised
and patiently explain that he will have them ready in another day
or two.

I don't want to sound like everything is late. Some things are reliable.
When movies are advertised to start at five, seven, and nine, they will
start at five, seven, and nine. Likewise, larger stores and restaurants
post hours and keep them. Some things can even be ahead of schedule.
Buses will leave early if they're already full.

So, by and large, the rule in Honduras is "mas tarde", or "later", be it
an hour or two, a day or two, or even longer. But, it is hard to break
old habits. Like with the pageant, even after over two years in Honduras,
I found it hard to stop being a gringo. I had difficulty not arriving
late and would normally be on time unless I was otherwise occupied. I
spent a lot of time waiting for that reason. But one thing I did learn in
Honduras was to take my time. If going somewhere, I never hurried to be
on time. I learned to patiently wait and read a book or just contemplate
my surroundings while waiting an hour or more for a bus along a dusty
rural roadside. No one rushed in Honduras, and it wasn't hard for me to
stop rushing either. In fact, when I came back to the States, I had to
learn how to rush all over again.

This website is maintained by Don Moore,Association of North American Radio Clubs
DXer of the Year for 1995.